Romeo & Juliet - Love in Shakespeare's World

What this episode is about: Discover the shocking truth about Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in this episode of The Brit Lit Book Club. What if the world's most famous love story isn't really about love at all? Join host Vanessa for a fascinating deep dive and literary analysis into the social forces, family expectations, and Elizabethan marriage politics that make this tragedy so much more complex (and relevant) than you remember from school.

Explore how Shakespeare compressed the timeline to just four days, why 13-year-old Juliet's arranged marriage was scandalous even by 1590s standards, and what family honor culture meant for young people trapped between personal desire and social obligation. Learn why this 430-year-old play still resonates in our modern world of parental expectations, cultural divides, and pressure to make life-changing decisions at breakneck speed.

Whether you're a Shakespeare enthusiast, British literature lover, or simply curious about how classic stories reflect timeless human conflicts, this episode offers fresh insights into one of the most adapted works in literary history. From West Side Story to Baz Luhrmann's adaptation, discover why every generation finds new meaning in Romeo and Juliet.

Topics covered: Elizabethan marriage customs, women's rights in Shakespeare's England, family honor and violence, modern adaptations, Shakespeare's language and poetry, recommended books for further reading.

Perfect for: book clubs, classic literature students, Shakespeare fans, and anyone interested in how classic literature illuminates contemporary social issues.

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Transcript

0:03

Hi, and welcome back to the Brit Lit Book Club. I'm your host Vanessa Hunt, and I'm so grateful that you've returned for a second literary adventure together. Before we dive in, grab yourself a cup of tea if you can. I'm sipping a lovely Earl Gray, one of my favorites this morning, and there's something wonderfully comforting about settling in with a warm cup while we explore one of the most famous love stories ever written. Last week, we unraveled the mystery of who Shakespeare really was. The enigmatic glove maker's son, who somehow became the greatest writer in the English language. Today we're diving into his most famous play, and I suspect you think you know this story. Romeo and Juliet, star cross lovers balcony scene, tragic ending. But here's what I wanna challenge you on today, Romeo and Juliet isn't really a love story. Not in the way we think of love stories today. It's actually a brutal examination of what happens when individual desire crashes, headlong into family expectations, social control, and political power. When Shakespeare wrote this play around 1595, he wasn't writing about teenagers rebelling against their parents because they wanted to follow their hearts. He was writing about a society where marriage was a business transaction, where children were economic assets and where family honor mattered more than individual happiness. And the really fascinating part, nearly 430 years later, we're still grappling with many of the same conflicts. So let's take a step back into Shakespeare's world and see this story through Elizabeth and Eyes, because once you understand what marriage and family meant in the 1590s, Romeo and Juliet becomes not just more tragic, but more relevant to our modern struggles than you might imagine. Let me start with something that might surprise you. Romeo and Juliet isn't an origin story. Shakespeare, adapted it from earlier sources. There were Italian novels, French poems, even an English version by Arthur Brook that Shakespeare definitely read. But here's what Shakespeare did that was brilliant. He compressed the timeline In Brook's version. The story takes place over months. Shakespeare squeezed everything into just four days. Four days from the moment Romeo and Juliet meet to the moment they die in that tomb. Why does this matter? Because it creates this incredible sense of urgency and inevitability. These aren't characters carefully weighing their options. They're caught in a whirlwind of passion, violence, and fate that moves faster than they can think. Let's walk through what actually happens, because the plot is more complex than the romantic tragedy we remember. Day one: Romeo is moping around because he is in love with Rosaline, who doesn't love him back. His friends drag him to a Caplet party to cheer him up. There, he meets Juliet and they fall instantly in love. They kiss. Twice! At a party in front of everyone. This is scandalous behavior In 1595,. Day two: the balcony scene happens that night. By the next day, they're secretly married by Friar Lawrence That afternoon Romeo kills Juliet cousin Tybalt in a street fight, and is banished from Verona. They have their wedding night, then Romeo Fleas. Day three: Juliet parents not knowing she's already married, tell her she must marry. Count Paris immediately. When she refuses, her father threatens to disown her. Friar Lawrence gives her a potion to fake her own death. Day four: Juliet takes the potion. Romeo thinking she's dead, buys poison and kills himself beside her tomb. She wakes up, finds him dead and stabs herself. There you go, Romeo and Julia, in a nutshell. Now. When you lay it all out like that, what do you notice? This isn't a story about love conquering all. This is a story about two young people trapped by forces completely beyond their control, family feuds, social expectations, and their own impulsive natures. The real conflict isn't between Romeo and Juliet. They actually agree about everything. The conflict is between their private desires and public demands. Between what they want and what their family wants. What their society and their world expected from them, And that's what makes this play so much more than a simple romance. Shakespeare, is examining the cost of rigid social structures, the violence that comes from honor culture, and what happens when young people are given no voice in decisions that will shape their entire lives. To understand why Romeo and Juliet's story was so shocking to Shakespearean audience, we need to understand what marriage meant in Elizabeth in England. First marriage was not about love. I know that sounds harsh to our modern ears, but in the 1590s, marriage was an economic and political arrangement between families. Love, if it came at all, was expected to develop after the wedding. For wealthy families, like the Capulet and Montagues marriage was about forming alliances, combining wealth, and producing heirs. When Lord Caplet promises Juliet to count Paris, he's not thinking about her happiness. He's thinking about connecting his family to Paris's social status and wealth. This is why Julius's refusal to marry Paris is so shocking to her parents. She's not just rejecting a husband, she's rejecting her family's business strategy. She's threatening their social standing and their economic future. Let's talk about what this meant for young women, specifically. In Elizabethan in England, women were legally considered property. First of their fathers, then of their husbands. They couldn't inherit property in their own right, could not make legal contracts, could not even choose where to live. Juliet is about 13 years old in the play. Shakespeare makes this very clear. Her mother tells us she was married and had Juliet when she was around the same age. This wasn't unusual. Girls from wealthy families were often married in the early teens to much older men. But here's what's crucial to understand. While marriages were arranged, they typically weren't forced. Fathers had the legal right to choose their daughter's husband, but social custom expected them to consider their daughter's feelings. A father who forced an unwilling daughter into marriage would face social criticism. This is what makes Lord Capulet behavior so shocking, even by Elizabethan standards. When Juliet refuses Paris, Capulet doesn't just insist, he explodes with rage. He calls her disobedient wretch and threatens to drag her to the church himself. He tells her that if she doesn't marry Paris, he'll disown her completely, which would leave her with no money, no home, and no social standing. Even Juliet nurse, who has been like a mother to her, eventually tells her to just marry Paris and forget about Romeo because the alternative being disowned by her family was essentially a death sentence for a young woman in this society. Now let's talk about the boys, because Romeo's situation is complicated too. Young men from wealthy families had more freedom than women, but they were still expected to marry strategically. Romeo's secret marriage to Juliet isn't just romantic rebellion. It's a betrayal of his family's interests. And there's something else, the culture of honor that dominates the play. In Elizabethan in England, especially among the upper class family, honor was everything An insult to your family named, demanded a response of often of violent one. This is why the feud between the Montagues and the Capulet is so destructive. It's not just that they don't like each other. It's that each family's honor demands, they respond to any slight from the other family. When Tybalt kills Mercutio, Romeo has to respond or be seen as a coward. When Romeo kills Tybalt, the prince has to banish him or appear weak. The young people in this play are trapped in a cycle of violence and honor that they didn't create, but cannot escape. Here's what's really tragic Friar Lawrence represents the one institution that might have helped them. The church. In theory, the church taught that marriage should be based on mutual consent and even love, but in practice, even Friar Lawrence can't protect Romeo and Juliet from the Social Forces arrayed against them. His plan to fake Juliet's death shows how desperate the situation has become. The only way for these young people to be together is to literally fake death and flee their entire world. So why does this story about 13th century Italian teenagers written by a 16th century English playwright, still feel so urgent and relevant today? Why are so many people still reading this in high schools across the country? Because the fundamental conflict hasn't changed, we're still struggling with the tension between individual desire and family expectations. Between personal choice and social pressure. Between love and practical considerations. Think about it. How many modern families still have strong opinions about who their children should marry? How many young people today feel pressure to choose partners based on education, career prospects, or social background, rather than just love. The specific constraints have changed, but the underlying tension remains. Instead of arranged marriages, we have parental expectations about college career paths, and life choices. Instead of family feuds, we have political division, cultural conflicts, and economic pressures that can tear families apart. Consider how relevant these themes are today. Young people falling in love across racial, religious, or class lines and facing family opposition. Parents who can't understand why their children won't follow traditional paths. The pressure to marry within your social group or religion, your economic class. And there's something else that feels very modern about this. Play the speed of it all. Romeo and Juliet make life-changing decisions in moments. They fall in love, instantly. Marrying impulsively. And die tragically. All because they can't slow down long enough to think through alternatives. Doesn't that sound familiar in our age of social media, instant communication and fomo? We live in a world where young people are expected to make major decisions quickly, where everything feels urgent, where the pressure to act can override the wisdom to wait. But I think there's something even deeper that makes this story endure. It's about the cost of rigid systems that don't allow for human complexity. The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet isn't that they loved each other. It's that they lived in a world where their love was impossible, where family honor mattered more than individual happiness, where violence was seen as the only response to conflict, where young people had no voice in decisions that would determine their entire lives. Shakespeare isn't saying that all family expectations are bad, or that young people should always follow their hearts regardless of consequences. What he's showing us is what happens when systems become so rigid that they can't bend without breaking. The prince's, final words in the play are crucial,"all are punished." The family's insistence on maintaining their feud hasn't just destroyed Romeo and Juliet. It cost both families their heirs. Their rigidity has defeated its own purpose. This feels incredibly relevant as we navigate modern conflicts between tradition and change. Between stability and progress. Between respecting family values and allowing individual growth. Before we wrap up, I want to spend just a moment on something that often gets lost when we focus on the plot. Shakespeare's language and his play is absolutely gorgeous. This is where we see Shakespeare's genius for writing on multiple levels simultaneously. The poetry serves the story, but it also elevates the entire experience. Take the famous balcony scene. Yes, it's romantic, but listen to what's actually happening with the language. Romeo speaks in elaborate artificial conceits, comparing Juliet to the sun, talking about her eyes as the stars. He's using the fashionable poetry style of the 1590s, but Juliet language is more direct, more honest. When Romeo starts getting flowery about swearing his love by the moon, she cuts him off."Oh, swear. Not by the moon, the Inconstant moon that monthly changes in her circled orb, lest that thy love prove likewise variable." She's not just being romantic, she's being practical. Don't make promises you can't keep, don't use pretty words that don't mean anything. This difference in their language styles shows us something important about their characters. Romeo is initially caught up in the idea of being in love. Remember at the beginning of the play, he's mooning over Rosaline, using familiar, flowery language, but Juliet grounds him in reality. And the famous"what's in a name?" speech"a rose by any other name would smell a sweet." That's not just pretty poetry. That's Juliet wrestling with the fundamental problem of their situation. Names matter in their world. Family names determine everything, but she's arguing that the essential person shouldn't be defined by the social label. Its philosophy disguised as love poetry. The proof that this story still speaks to us, look at how many times it's been adapted, reimagined and retold. The West Side story transplants the feuding families to the 1950s New York gang divided by ethnicity. The recent Steven Spielberg version makes it explicitly about immigration, gentrification, and economic inequality. Baz Luhrmann's 1996 film with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes updates it to a modern Verona beach, complete with guns, cars, and MTV style editing, but keeps Shakespeare's original language. It works because the underlying conflicts are timeless. There have been several versions set during the Civil War and Nazi Germany and modern day Palestine and Israel. Each adaptation finds new ways to explore the central theme: what happens when love crosses the lines that society has drawn? And it's not just film and theater. The story shows up in novels, ballets, operas, even anime, because every generation finds something in the story that speaks to their particular moment. What I find most interesting is that the best adaptations don't try to make Romeo Juliet love story simpler or more purely romantic. They understand that the power comes from the complexity, from the way individual desires clash with social forces that are bigger than any one person. All right, now for book recommendations. If today's episode has sparked your curiosity about Romeo and Juliet, or about love and marriage and Shakespeare's time, I've got some wonderful recommendations for you For understanding Shakespeare's world: lisa Jardine's"Still Harping on Daughters" is brilliant on women and marriage in Shakespeare's plays. She shows how Shakespeare was actually quite progressive in its portrayal of intelligent, strong-willed women who chafe against social constraints. For a broader look at love and marriage in Elizabeth in Time: Lawrence Stones,"The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England, 1500 to 1800" is fascinating. It's academic, but very readable, and it shows you how the modern ideas about romantic love were just beginning to emerge in Shakespeare's time. For modern takes on the story. If you enjoyed thinking about how this story translates to modern conflicts, try"Prince of Shadows" by Rachel Caine. It retells Romeo and Juliet from the perspective of Benvolio, Romeo's cousin, and it does a brilliant job of showing how the family feud affects everyone in both houses. Anna Godbersen's,"Bright Young Things" series transplants, similar themes to 1920s New York. Young people caught between family expectation and personal desires during a time of rapid social change. For Shakespeare's language. If you want to dive deeper into how Shakespeare's poetry works, Frank Kermode's"Shakespeare's Language" is excellent. He shows how Shakespeare's use of language evolved through his career and how the poetry serves the drama. And here's the fun one."Shakespeare Saved My Life" by Laura Bates is about a professor who teaches Shakespeare in a supermax prison. The inmates insights into Romeo and Juliet are often more profound than anything you'll read in academic criticism. They understand the consequences of violence and the tragedy of wasted potential in ways that make the play feel incredibly immediate. For historical context. If you want to understand more about family life and social expectations in Shakespeare's England, try"The Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England" by Ian Mortimer. It's like a guidebook for the 1590s covering everything from what people ate to how they courted and to what happened if you defied your parents. Thank you so much for joining me for this deep dive into Romeo and Juliet. I hope I've convinced you that there's so much more to this play than a simple love story we often remember from school. Next week we're moving forward in time to meet Jane Austen, another writer who understood the tension between individual desire and social expectation, but who approached with wit, irony and ultimately much more hope than poor Romeo and Juliet ever had. We will explore how Austen lived as a single woman in Regency England. How she quietly revolutionized the novel and why her sharp observations about money, marriage and social climbing still make us laugh and wince in recognition today. Until then, keep reading and stay curious. And if you've been inspired by our journey through Shakespeare's Verona, remember that you can actually walk the streets where these stories came to life. The Reconstructed Globe Theater in London performs Romeo and Juliet regularly. Just this last summer, they were performing a Western Romeo, and Juliet, and there's something magical about hearing those famous words spoken in the round with the audience gathered close just as Shakespeare intended. You can find out more about experiencing Shakespeare's world firsthand at the book club tour.com. Well, my tea's getting cold, so until next time, keep rating and stay curious.